


Pandora's Box

by ScarletteStar1



Category: Hannibal - Fandom, Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol, Drugs, Gen, Murder, Murder Husbands, Suicidal Ideation, remembering, serious cognitive dissonance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:07:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24361057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScarletteStar1/pseuds/ScarletteStar1
Summary: "Her heart had never beat as fast as it ever had in her entire life when she’d stood in her bathroom and begged Hannibal to help her. It might have been the most exhilarating moment of her life. Arousing enough, anyway, to allow Hannibal to take her back to the living room and fuck her senseless on the sofa while the dead, empty eyes of the corpse watched them."Bedelia contemplates the past as her future becomes much shorter.
Relationships: Bedelia Du Maurier/Hannibal Lecter, Bedelia Du Maurier/Will Graham, Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 10
Kudos: 41





	Pandora's Box

**Author's Note:**

> Pandemic musings have me thinking about the secondary strain of the virus that has unleashed a very unkind, presumptuous, and hostile manner among people, especially online. It has caused me to delete several social platforms over the past week because my skin is just way too thin. . . I guess writing this piece was my way of acting out on the feelings of unspeakable anger and empathy coiled restlessly in my soul. 
> 
> I hope you are all well.

She keeps the ornate box near her. Perched like a holy relic on her bed side table, its lacquered finish gleams. Next to it sits a cut crystal decanter of single malt scotch. Each night, it ages just a little more as it waits patiently for her to decide a date of consumption.

The box had been a gift from Hannibal. He’d brought it back from a market in Marrakesh, perhaps, or at least he said he did. It was one of the many things he’d given her during a phase in which he’d insisted on giving her ostentatious presents on an obscenely frequent basis. Bedelia imagines it would please him to no end to peek into this particular item now, to find that she has turned it into a coffin for a clever assortment of barbiturates, benzodiazepines, and even a couple syringes of morphine. Mixed with alcohol, there would be no return.

Bedelia imagines Hannibal holding the box, peering into it and looking back at her with a smile stretched over his face. She can’t quite make out what it is he would say about her collection, but he would love knowing it existed, would laud her creativity and precision.

And he would love knowing every muscle in her minuscule frame fought the tension of persuasion.

Bedelia considers confessing about her boon to Will Graham, but she does not. She hoards her selfish secret for her and Hannibal alone.

It matters very little that Hannibal is locked away like a rare species, that he knows nothing of this particular secret. 

It is still theirs, and theirs alone.

Will visits her more often than either of them would properly admit. They sit in the bland softness of her less formal parlor and jab one another while they grow comfortably numb on wine or whiskey.

Will pretends he does not visit Hannibal.

Bedelia pretends she does not want to.

“Could you ever have been more than his lamb?” Bedelia asks one night. She curls her feet under her and brushes a platinum lock off her forehead. “It’s what he called you, you know, his lamb.” Although barely more than a whisper, her voice is barbed.

“It’s oddly gratifying to know he spoke of me at all while the two of you were on your Italian honeymoon,” Will smiles bitterly. “But then I suppose cannibals are curious husbands, aren’t they?”

Bedelia scoffs, raises an eyebrow and volleys back, “I believe you would know better than I would. Isn’t that true?” She watches Will shake his head with a sad smile. He stretches his legs out in front of him and leans back on the sofa.

“Did Hannibal ever tell you you’re a mean drunk?” He takes off his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose.

“Hannibal told me many things. I was his therapist for the better part of a decade prior to becoming. . . other things to him. That was long before you came along, Will.”

“Ethically you were equally yolked, that’s for sure,” Will quips, but his voice is soft.

“Human morality can be a fragile thing, as Hannibal has taught us both, but that is neither here nor there,” Bedelia’s hair falls in front of her porcelain facial features as she sips her drink.

Will’s insults inflict neither pain nor ire. Sadly, she realizes she’s not even amused.

She wonders when she last felt anything other than the satin, smooth chill of marble beneath the surface of her flesh. Paris? Florence? Baltimore so long before?

Her heart had never beat as fast as it ever had in her entire life when she’d stood in her bathroom and begged Hannibal to help her. It might have been the most exhilarating moment of her life. Arousing enough, anyway, to allow Hannibal to take her back to the living room and fuck her senseless on the sofa while the dead, empty eyes of the corpse watched them. He hadn’t even taken off his suit, nor had he undressed her, simply pulled himself out of his pants, rucked up her skirt and pushed himself around the side of her silk panties.

To this day, she believes it is the hardest she’s ever cum, legs wrapped akimbo around his lithe waist, shoes slipping off, nails digging into the heritage wool of his bespoke suit jacket. To this day, it is the scene she conjures when she pleasures herself; the way her body shattered around him in unbearable bliss as she stared in absolute terror at the rigid body on the floor.

Bedelia’s need had awoken a state of raw stimulation in Hannibal. It was after her cry for assistance and their subsequent consummation he began courting her in earnest, giving her expensive artifacts of art, custom made gowns, and unusual pieces of jewelry. He traveled to France and had a perfume made just for her. As far as she knew, she was the only person on the face of the earth who had ever worn the complicated blend of jasmine, black pepper, vanilla, and amber he created. Nose twitching now, she smugly surmises he’d never made such a gesture for the disheveled man before her who emits an odor of dog and Old Spice.

And yet. . . this frumpy scholar with his primal essence and complete lack of pretense had awoken something utterly different in Hannibal.

It was peculiar.

Bedelia was not so much jealous as she was intrigued, which was perhaps why she entertained the flannel and jean companionship of Will Graham on so many a night.

“I have experienced the magic of being reflected off of the golden sheen of Himself, of seeing myself through the swirling amber of his artist’s eyes. And although I don’t think I’ll ever be exactly fond of you, I find myself knowing you, sharing a sort of affinity as it were,” Bedelia offers.

“Have you been to see him?”

“No.” She fondles the stem of her glass and pretends to smile carelessly. “You’ll go tomorrow?”

“I don’t know,” Will sighs. He slams his glass on the table with a bit more force than he meant. “Either way, I should go. It’s late.”

“It is late, but you’ve had quite a bit to drink. You should stay. Sleep on the couch, or the spare room. You know your way around,” Bedelia says and rises. She feels the pull of her box. “Goodnight, Will.”

She glides to her room and undresses, eager for her ritual. A part of her enjoys the installment of Hannibal’s lamb, curled like a wisp of smoke under a blanket, a room away.

If she wakes in the night, she will wander back out to steal a glimpse of him as he lies, intoxicated in slumber. Just the thought of this causes her face to warm into a smile as she washes over the very same basin where she begged Hannibal to help her. In the mirror, she judges herself to be still beautiful, if not even pretty, as she pats herself dry. She rubs cream into her skin with supple fingers. She dabs perfume on her wrists, then brings her wrists to her neck and her temples. Her nostrils flare at the wild, white spiral of jasmine, the soothing lull of vanilla, the prickle of pepper, and the cosmic burst of amber. She likes to recall scent is the most primal of senses as she drifts off to sleep. 

Gliding like a ghost to bed, she presses balm into her lips. Wiping the dewy residue on the back of her hand, she takes the ornate box off its alter as her body seeks its cushion.

Before lowering her head to pillow, she silently opens the lid and takes stock. She removes the crystal stopper from the lavish container and inhales rich grain of a far away land. She places it all back precisely as it was. 

Then she pulls her covers up and closes her eyes, content in knowing eternity lies at her fingertips.

**Author's Note:**

> All comments are welcome, and I try very hard to respond to everyone. Connection is cherished now more than ever, and if you are here I am so grateful for you taking the time to read my work. xoxoxo


End file.
